Turn with me in your Bible to
Isaiah chapter 53 please. Isaiah chapter 53. Isaiah 53
verses 10 and 11. Isaiah writes in verse
10, Yet it pleased the Lord. Now notice that the word Lord
there is all capitalized. It means Jehovah, the self-existent
One. It pleased the Lord Jehovah to
bruise Him, speaking of the Lord Jesus Christ. The Lord Jehovah
hath put Him, Christ, to grieve. When thou shalt make His soul
an offering for sin, He, God the Father, shall see His Christ's
seed He shall prolong his days, and the pleasure which comes
from being pleased of the Lord shall prosper in his hand. And he shall see of the travail
of his, Christ's soul, and shall be satisfied. By his knowledge
shall my righteous servant justify many, not the whole world, many,
For he, the Lord Jesus, shall bear their iniquities. You know, when you make a purchase
of something significant, like a home or a car or something
very costly, you always hope to be pleased with it. It's nothing
worse than to not be pleased with a costly purchase. You find pleasure in it if you
are pleased. And you certainly hope to be
satisfied with what you purchase when it costs you such a great
deal. Well, I'm here to tell you this
morning that God Almighty made a purchase from the foundation
of the world that cost Him His most loved and His most valued
possession, His beloved Son. And as we see from our text,
the Lord Jehovah, God the self-existent One, the Eternal One, was pleased
to expend this great cost, which was to bruise His Son and put
Him to grief. And you tell that to someone
in the world that doesn't know the Gospel, doesn't know the
Scriptures, well, they'd think you were crazy. But what a high
and great cost that the Lord God was satisfied with Christ
purchased for the justification of His chosen people. The child
of God is bought with a price. Scripture is very clear about
that. 1 Corinthians 6.20, 1 Corinthians 7.23. bought with a price. Never, ever
forget, child of God, that you're bought with a price, with the
precious blood and crucifixion of the Lord Jesus Christ. You
know, within the last year, we had a religious man visit our
services on two different occasions, and on his second visit, he asked
me if we had a church creed in print for him to read. And I
told him matter-of-factly that we did. And Larry Brown was in
the back with me and he looked at me funny like, no we don't.
And I said yes, yes we do. Our church creed is a statement,
and a church creed is just that, it's a statement of what we as
followers of Christ believe. I said it's the Word of God.
I said you hold it in your hand right now. It's the word, this
is our church creed. This is what we believe. This
is who we follow. And you know, I don't suppose
there's a single chapter in all the Bible that is more conclusive
of the gospel than Isaiah chapter 53. It's the good news that we
believe and trust and rest in. And how amazing are the words
of our text. It pleased Jehovah God to bruise
the Lord Jesus Christ. It pleased God to put Him to
grief. How can that be? The Father not
only permitted Christ to suffer for His elect's place as their
substitute in sin offering. Friends, He purposed it. He predestinated
it. And He willed it to be. Acts
2 verse 23, you know the verses well. You men of Israel, hear
these words. Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved
of God among you by miracles and wonders and signs which God
did by Him in the midst of you. as ye yourselves also know Him,
the same One, this beloved Son, being delivered by the determinate
counsel and foreknowledge of God, you have taken with your
wicked hands and have crucified and slain." And I'll just add
this footnote, it pleased the Lord to do so. Why? The same reason that it pleased
Him to make you His people. For the Lord would not forsake
His people for His great name's sake, because it hath pleased
the Lord to make you His people. Isn't that amazing? That it pleased
the Lord to make me His? Yes it did. In Christ it did.
And it pleased the Lord to bruise His Son and put Him to grief
in the sense that in doing so, He will accomplish and purpose
the redemption of His people. That's why it pleased Him. The
sword of justice has wakened against the Lord Jesus Christ. And where sin was found upon
the Lord Jesus, the Lord didn't spare Him. The Lord spared Him
not. Oh, you want to consider the holy justice of God? You
consider that. That when my sin and your sin
was put upon the perfect Son of God, God killed Him because
His justice would not allow otherwise. He that spared not His own Son,
but delivered Him up for us all, all the world know, all that
believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. Shall He not with Him freely
give us all things? You better believe He will. The
Scriptures declare that God will show mercy. That God will redeem
a people. That heaven will be populated
with a holy people that are just like His beloved Son. He set
out from the foundation of the world. He chose a people. He
gave them to Christ. And He's going to conform them
to His very image. You know what that means? That
means we're going to be perfect. Perfect. We talked about that
a great deal in the first hour. And this was the reason that
God was pleased to bruise him and put him to grieve. Now, in
verse 10, our text begins with that word, yet. This is why. That's what that word means.
Yet. This is why. It pleased the Lord to bruise
him and put him to grieve. And you might ask, how so and
why? Well, look up at verse 4. And we see why. Surely He, the
Lord Jesus, hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows, and
yet we did esteem Him stricken and smitten of God and afflicted.
Verse 5. But He was wounded, now look
at this, for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement, punishment
of our peace was upon Him. If we're ever to have peace,
we've got to be perfect to be accepted. And Christ is the only
way that we can be. And with His stripes, we are
healed. Him and me. Him and you. It's all about Him. Salvation
is of the Lord. I never grow tired of saying
that. And you never grow tired of hearing it, do you? What was
it that you and I did? How did we contribute in any
way? Well, look at verse 6. All we, like sheep, have gone
astray. There's what you've contributed.
We have turned everyone to his own way. That's what we did. And the Lord hath laid on him
the iniquity of us all. Verse 7, He was oppressed and
He was afflicted, yet He opened not His mouth. Why didn't He
open His mouth? Have you ever thought about that?
Because we were guilty. Those that He stood in the room
instead of were guilty. He didn't open His mouth because
He was standing guilty for us. He's brought as a lamb to the
slaughter and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so He openeth
not His mouth. You see, friends, we were the
guilty ones. He was oppressed for us. He was
afflicted for us. His mouth was shut because we're
guilty. Verse 8, he was taken from prison
and from judgment. And who shall declare his generation? For he was cut off out of the
land of the living. And he was so because we're dead
in trespasses and sin. For the transgression of my people,
it says right there. That's why. was He stricken. And again, it was because of
our sin, not His. He knew no sin. He was made to
be sin, who knew no sin, that we, the sinners that we are,
might be made the righteousness of God in Him. That's the only
righteousness we had before God. In verse 9, He made His grave
with the wicked. You know, the Lord was designed
by God to die between two common things. He made his grave with
the wicked. And then it says, and with the
rich in his death. And that denotes the Lord Jesus
that was laid in a borrowed tomb of a rich man. He didn't have
a tomb of his own. He had no place to lay his head. Because he had done no violence,
neither was any deceit. in his mouth. It was because
of our balance and it was because of our hatred and deceit that
he died. And it was because of our wickedness
that he was stricken. And some will say, well, I'm
not all that bad. Well, you're worse than that.
You just don't know it. You just don't know it. Now,
in our text, we clearly see three things. We see, first, the cause
of Christ's death. Secondly, we see the reason for
Christ's death. And then thirdly, the effects
of Christ's death. So let's take them one by one.
I'm not going to keep you long. First, where did Christ's death
originate? It's not a trick question. Where
did it originate? Who was the cause of His death?
Was it the Jewish people? Was it the Roman government?
No. It was God. God was the cause
of His death. It pleased the Lord. It pleased
Jehovah to bruise Him. He, Jehovah, God, put Him to
grief. It was much more than the enmity
of the Jews. It was much more than the fickleness
of the Roman government. that put Christ to death on the
cross. We've got to look beyond Pilate.
We've got to look beyond Herod to see who was really behind
the nailing of our Savior to the cross. It's His Him. Christ being delivered by the
determinate counsel and foreknowledge, the will and purpose, and the
foreknowledge, the forethought and permission of God. That's who was cause of it. Men
with their wicked hands took and crucified and murdered the
Lord Jesus Christ, but they did exactly what God allowed them
to do. They wanted to kill Him. It was
their will to kill Him. They had tried on occasions before.
And I love how the scripture says, He walked through the midst
of them, because His time had not yet come. You know when the
time came? When God willed it to come. And
not a second before. It was by the permissible will
of God, if we can use that kind of language. We're in over our
head. I know that much. God let them have their way to
accomplish His will. You see, friends, the wrath,
the hatred, the enmity of men and women in this world shall
praise God. It's gonna do His bidding. And
God restrains what remains of that wrath. That's what David
said in Psalm 70, 16. And we dare not impute or charge
God with sin. but out of divine love for his
people as elect, it pleased Jehovah to bruise him. My, my, it pleased
God in the sense that it was the only way that God could be
just and justify his people justly. It's all about holy justice.
God cannot just sweep sin under a rug. The wages of sin is death. He that, the soul that sins,
it shall die because a holy God demands it. But God, in His wisdom,
made a way that He could be just and justify the likes of someone
like me. And you know what we call it?
The gospel. It's the good news of how God
saved sinners. It was the fulfillment of God's
covenant and the accomplishment of His purpose and the redemption
of His people. And I'm not much interested in
hearing anything else. I'm not much interested. No,
let me rephrase that. I'm not interested at all in
preaching anything else. Christ was sent into the world
by His Father. It was the result of His love
for His people. God so loved the world that He
gave, what did He give? His only begotten Son, His most
prized possession, the thing that meant everything to Him.
Did He give His Son to the whole world? Well, will all the world
be saved? Is that not what John 3.16 says? Well, actually it proves just
the opposite. It says that whosoever believeth
in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life. Those
in the world that believe on Christ, those in the world that
trust in Christ, those in the world that rest in Christ, they're
the ones that's gonna be saved. The qualification of saving is
believing. Faith comes by hearing, and hearing
by the Word, and we're saved by grace through faith, and that's
not of ourselves. We didn't muster up the grace.
We didn't muster up the faith. It was a gift to us by God. It's
not a work, unless any man should bow. It's the gift of God. Whosoever believes on Christ
shall not perish. Whosoever trusts in Christ to
put away their sin, their sin will be put away. Whosoever rests
in their soul in His finished work shall find rest. You know,
I say this all the time. I'm going to say it again. We
may need a stick one of these times. But when is a man's work
finished? When is a woman's work finished?
I mean, when do we rest? When our work's finished. See,
I've said it so much, I got it mixed up. Whosoever believes
that Christ alone put away their sin and satisfied God's holy
justice in their room instead is those whom Christ died for.
And that's who will not perish. And that's who will have everlasting
life. I often think about Abraham the
faithful. He rises up early one morning.
He wakes his son up and he says, come with me, son. And he said,
listen, don't wake your mom. And they go three days' journey
with two other young men. They arrive at the mount that
God told them to go to, where God told him to take his son.
And that's not all He told him. He said, you take your son, the
only son, the son that you love. And boy, don't you know Abraham
loved that boy? Why, he waited 100 years to have
him. He loved him. And God said, you
take him and you offer him as a burnt offering to sacrifice
your son. And can you imagine the anguish
of Abraham's soul? He had to be the executioner
of the one that he loved more than life itself. So he walked
up the mountainside and Isaac, he says, Father, I see the fire
and I see the wood. And he said, but where is the
sacrifice for burnt offering? Then comes the words that are
a comfort and a peace and peace and assurance and rest for every
chosen child of God. Abraham said, my son, God will
provide himself a lamb for burnt offering. God not only provides for himself,
beloved, God only provides an offering for us. God provides
himself as the offering and the sacrifice. He's the only one
that could. He's the only one that could
meet the demands of God's holy justice. He's the only one that
could fulfill the law, the holy law of God. And that offering
and perfect sacrifice is Jesus Christ, who is the fullness of
the Godhead bodily. And He's the only one who can
satisfy just God's demands. Any other sacrifice must be perfect
to be accepted, will not suffice, because it can't be perfect.
And you and I can't offer anything perfect that God will accept.
It's got to be perfect. It's got to be perfect. Christ
as God is the only one that can provide it. And He provides Himself
as a sacrifice, and that is the Gospel. It has nothing to do
with what we ourselves do. Isaac didn't struggle to escape
from his father. He's willing to die if God has
decreed it. God has promised Abraham a seed
through Isaac. And he knows, and I'm convinced
that Isaac knows, that if God kills Isaac, he's gonna raise
him up. Because he's made him a promise
that the Messiah would come through his seed. Abraham takes his son. He binds his hand in his feet.
He piles up the stones. He makes an altar. He lays the
wood. He gets the fire ready. The knife
is unsheathed. It's raised in the air, ready
to come down on the one that he loved so much. And Abraham
lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, behind him a ram
caught in the thicket. God is going to provide himself. for himself and that ram is a
picture and a type of the Lord Jesus Christ. He took the ram
and offered him for a burnt offering in the stead of his son. And that's exactly what he did
for you and I. In the stead of our wretchedness,
our sin, Christ died for us. Abraham called the place Jehovah-Jireh. God will provide. And don't you
ever forget it. God's gonna provide for himself
a sacrifice and he provides himself as a sacrifice. And again, this
is the gospel. It's God who provides the salvation
for his people. We don't provide for ourselves.
I wanna keep saying that because so many people think that they
do. What must I do to be saved? You can't do anything. You can
rest in the finished work of Christ and Him alone, salvations
of the Lord. For He hath done great things
for us. Wherefore, we are glad. I told the folks in Kingsport
a week or so ago that that was something my mother used to always
say to me. I'd get mad and, you know, puff
up and pout, and she'd go, well, just get glad in the same pants
you got mad in. And that's what we need to do. He hath done, he hath done, he
hath done great things for us, and we're glad. Nowhere in the
Bible does it say that we've done great things for God. Can
you tell me of one place? It's nothing but ignorance and
pride that makes men and women think that they have. And I'm
not calling you names. Ignorance just simply means unlearned. Untaught. I'm ignorant about
a lot of things. God had but one Son. And that
Son was His own heart's delight. And He covenanted to give Him
up for His people's redemption. And that's what He did. He's
not a man that he should lie or a son of man that he should
repent or change his mind. What God says, God does. In the fullness of time, God
sent forth His Son to be born of a virgin that He might suffer
for the sins of His elect people. It was a... I just lost the word. God the
Father thrust that sacrificial knife into His Son's heart and
completed in action what Abraham only did in intention. Herein
is love. Not that we love God, but that
He loved us. And what did He do? He sent His
Son to be a propitiation for our sin. And it's here that we
see how He pleased the Father to bruise Him. Secondly, what
was the reason of the Savior's suffering and death? We're told
very plainly. Told as a matter of fact. Thou
shalt make His soul, what? An offering for sin. There it
is. That's why. Our Lord was troubled
as He sweat, as it were, great drops of blood, because this
is why His soul was made an offering for sin. All the sin of all the
elect throughout all time was put on Him. Christ was an offering
for sin as the substitute of His people. God purposed to save
His people. He cannot fail. He's omnipotent. He's almighty. He's all-powerful. He's sovereign. And folks will
ask you questions like, well, why do you always have to say
that God is sovereign? And God alone, doesn't that mean
He's sovereign? Yeah, but that's not what most
people think. They tell me about their God. He's trying to do
something. He's wanting to do something. And you've got to
lend Him your will. You've got to help Him out. You've
got to give Him your heart. That's not sovereign. So we call
Him sovereign to distinguish Him and to clarify Him as He
is. Oh my, Lord help us. By the wisdom
of God, He provided a way, a way that God could be just and justify,
a way that God could be a just God and a Savior. And that's
what we need. We need a just God and a Savior.
A way that God could clear the guilty by making His people innocent. And that was only by making His
Son guilty that we might be innocent. Jesus Christ, the Son of God,
shall stand in man's place and He shall be offered upon the
cross instead of man. Instead of you. That's what you
deserve. That's what I deserve. When Christ
was crucified and dying, He's dying for all those He stood
as the scapegoat and the substitute for. He didn't die for Himself. He had no sin that He had to
pay wages on. He died as a substitute. He died
in the room instead of believers. It's called substitution. God
the Son provided for Himself a lamb, and God provided Himself
as the lamb. And I mean to be repetitive,
because we need this and planted deep into our hearts and souls.
He didn't call Himself a substitute of sin. God, through the sufferings
of His death, put Him to grief and made His soul an offering
for sin. Because of our sin, you and I
were destined to die. Justice would determine that
we would live forever in hell. But that's what grace is. That's
what mercy is. Mercy is God not giving me what
I deserve. And grace is God giving me what
I don't deserve. Christ took the cup of agony
and anguish. Christ took the suffering and
misery that you and I deserve. And He drank the dregs of that
cup dry. And God satisfied. Satisfied. What a word that is. We don't
know much about it. We're never satisfied, are we?
It pleased the Lord to bruise the Lord Jesus. It's the only
way He could be just and justified. It pleased the Lord to put Christ
to grief. It was the only way He could
justly redeem His people. And the reason for Christ's death
was to make His soul an offering for sin. The sin of His people. We couldn't pay for the first
sin. You could throw me in hell forever and it wouldn't pay for
the first sin. Because I don't have any righteousness
of my own that would pay it. And eternity in hell wouldn't
justly pay for my first sin. But God made the Lord Jesus Christ
so an offering for sin. And God accepted it. How are
we accepted, John? In the Beloved. In the Lord Jesus
Christ. That's the only way. And Christ
said, it's finished. And God said, I'm satisfied.
And beloved, you and I who believe are saved. Oh, if that doesn't
tickle your innards, Mountain Dew won't. Thirdly and lastly,
I conclude with the result and blessed effect of Christ's death. The first effect and result of
our Savior's death is, it says here, He shall see His seed. What does that mean? He shall
see His seed. Every son, every daughter, every
elect sinner that is loved by Christ, and all of them are,
You know, many men and women live physically and naturally
in this world. They have children, and then
their children have children, and then we get old and we die,
and we never see our seed. We may see our children, and
we most of the time see our grandchildren, but when they have children,
we don't see our seed. We soon die, and we leave our
children and grandchildren, and we never see their seed. And
after their death, their children and their children's children
go on to having more children and offspring, but the one to
see doesn't see that seed. But Jesus Christ lives forever.
He lives forever. And He sees all His seed. All that come to Christ. All. He sees all His children brought
to believe and trust in Him. Christ forever lives to make
intercession for them. And all His seed shall be saved.
This spiritual seed, a number that no man can number, shall
be born again of incorruptible seed. That's the issue, you see. That's the reason. We're born
corruptible seed. The Lord makes us incorruptible.
We're born mortal men and women, but the Lord makes us immortal. And the second effect and result
is that He, God the Father, shall prolong Christ's days. His death
did not end His life. The tomb could not hold Him.
Do you ever think about why and how Christ rose from the tomb?
Couldn't hold Him. He's perfect. The grave didn't
have any victory over Him. Death could not imprison Him. The third day, as He promised,
the great Conqueror came forth from this prison house to die
no more. In that He died, He died unto
sin once, but in that He liveth, He liveth unto God, no more to
die. No more to die. He conquered
over death and hell, and so do we in Him. Did you hear me? So do we in
Him. God prolonged His days forever,
and we forever live being conformed to the image of our Lord Jesus. The stream that flowed from our
Savior's side cleansed and washed us of all sin. In the three hours
of midday darkness come the rising of a new sun of righteousness
that will never cease to shine on His people. They will not
be in darkness anymore. No more darkness. No more darkness. In verse 11 of our text, we see
that the Lord Jesus Christ is the believer's everything. He's
God's righteous servant. You see that? He served the Lord
and did His will. He is the sin-burier. He bore all the iniquities of
all His people, and He shall justify many, all of them that
are His. Because God shall see the travail
of His soul and be satisfied. That's why God's satisfied. God is pleased and God is satisfied
with Christ. And God is pleased and satisfied
with us in Him. Amen. Again, He bore our griefs. He carried our sorrows. He was
stricken and spitting and afflicted so that we might be pardoned,
freed and blessed. We get the opposite of what we
deserve. I who am nothing, I who has nothing,
I who can do nothing, will hear the Father say to me, well done,
thy good and faithful servant, enter thou in to the joy of the
Lord. What a wonderful, glorious news
of glad tidings. The good and faithful one, the
Lord Jesus, has made me good and faithful. Well, don't get puffed up. Don't
worry. Because I know that in me dwells no good thing. Only
in Christ is it good. Not in me. That is in my flesh.
There's a war going on here, friends. You can call it a new
nature, an old nature. You can call it new man, old
man. But it's a war, and it's going on within these members.
And what a wondrous mystery. God is pleased to save us from
our sin by laying our sins on His Son and making Him to suffer
for those sins as if those sins had been His own. But truer still
is that God made our sin to be His own. Christ wasn't a sinner. He knew no sin. But nonetheless,
He was made sin. And we were made the perfect
righteousness of God in Him. That's the best deal that's ever
been given on this earth. He took my sin. He gave me His
righteousness. That's why salvation is of the
Lord. Christ did for me what I could never do for myself.
And that is a great definition of redemption. That's why it's
called the Gospel. It's good news for sinners who
believe. Now in closing, verse 12 reveals
to believing sinners that our Lord Jesus is victorious in the
salvation of His people. Look at it with me. I'll be brief.
God divides the spoils here. You see that? But He does so
with the conqueror. The Lord Jesus is the conqueror
over sin. Why? Because He's poured out
His soul unto death. You know what that means? He
poured out His soul unto satisfaction. He was numbered with the transgressors.
You know what that means? Representation. He bore the sins
of many. You know what that is? Substitution. He made intercession for the
transgressors. You know what that means? He's
our one mediator between God and man. The man. The man Christ
Jesus. Oh my. He's our everything. He's our satisfaction. He's our
representation. He's our substitution. And He's
our mediator. Where else you gonna go? Nobody
else can provide that for you. And because of that, we who were
counted as sheep for the slaughter, And all these things are made
more, made more than conquerors through Him that loved us. Don't
leave that part out. Through Him that loved us. And
what is the result? We're persuaded. We're persuaded. We're convinced. We're assured. Well, how do you know that you're
right, brother? His Spirit bears witness with my spirit that I'm
the Son of God. That's the only answer I can
give you. His Spirit bears witness with my spirit that I'm one of
His. I'm convinced and assured that
neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor
powers, things present, things to come, no matter how high,
no matter how low, no creature of any kind, shall be able to
separate us from the love of God. Where is that love of God? Which is in Christ Jesus, our
Lord. The most vital question ever
asked, I'm gonna ask you again right now. And you don't have
to raise your hand and you don't have to come up front. You ponder
it and you think about it and you consider it. What think ye
of Christ? That's it. That's the most important
question ever asked. You see, in the end, that's all
that'll matter. Nothing else will matter. Not
another thing. What do you think of God, son?